Eryshae

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Mira

From her perch in the low boughs of a river ash, Mira crouched like a second shadow; silent, still, unseen. The lovers below were careless in their comfort. A tragic oversight. A beautiful one, too; if one were prone to sentiment. Mira wasn't.

She watched them with the quiet fascination of a hunter observing prey that had not yet realized it was marked. Vael's laughter drifted upward, soft as wind over glass. Sam's fingers brushed wet hair from her cheek. Mira tilted her head.

So much softness. So much heat. All so dangerously vulnerable.

Her hand hovered near the hilt of a dagger strapped along her thigh, but she didn't draw it. Not yet. She'd already memorized the landscape: the angles of the clearing, the rhythm of their breaths, how often Sam glanced toward the city behind them. Not trained. Just aware enough to stay lucky.

Lucky was fragile.

Ruwan would want to hear about this. Not for pleasure; he was beyond base indulgence; but for precision. He would see it for what it was: the tether that bound the Princess of the Eryshae to her druidic protector.

Vael had power. But more than that; she had affection. It radiated from her like the warmth of a fire, and fires could be suffocated. Mira crouched lower, a smirk curling faintly at the edge of her mouth. This was no longer a simple assignment. No cut-and-run. No ghost in the dark.

This was the slow bloom of opportunity. The kind that didn't just kill a figurehead; it broke the will of the people beneath her. Shattered loyalty. Corroded unity. Ruwan would not be satisfied with death.

He wanted disillusionment, he wanted Vael for himself. She could give it to him. Mira slipped silently from the tree, not so much landing as unfolding into the earth. Her boots made no sound. She ghosted back through the reeds, vanishing into the gray shimmer of dawn mist.

Plans coiled in her mind like knives in silk. She would leave no wound that did not bleed meaning. No mark that did not serve purpose. Tonight, they played at joy. Tomorrow, she would begin to take it apart.

Piece by precious piece.

The meeting point was an abandoned mill on the outskirts of Emberhold, where the forest grew too thick for the wind to reach. The wheel no longer turned. Its spokes were rotted and gnarled like old bone, and the creek that once powered it had been swallowed by moss and silence.

Mira stepped through the broken doorway without knocking. The air inside was cool and stale; sawdust and ruin; and the shadows clung like a second skin. Even her sharp eyes struggled to parse the interior at first.

But she felt him. Before she heard the voice. "You're late," it rasped. The figure stood near the rear wall, half-veiled by the mill's collapsed rafters. Light didn't touch him; refused to. Not a glimmer of reflection off skin or steel. He could've been a ghost. A mirage. But the voice was real enough, low and steady with an edge like broken iron.

Mira didn't flinch. "The riverbank took longer than expected. The princess is drunk on him. The Druid has her wrapped around his fingers like silk."

"And she trusts the Emberhold elders?"

"She thinks they're still loyal to the Tribe. To Corven. But their loyalties are brittle." He stepped forward; just enough to make her feel it in her gut. Still cloaked in shadow. Still faceless.

Mira inclined her head slightly. "Orders from Ruwan." The name hung heavy. She reached into her coat and passed him a sealed scroll, black wax stamped with his sigil. The figure took it without sound.

"Vice-Chief Farouq is to accelerate the training of the Emberhold garrison. Ruwan wants full drills, combat-readiness within two weeks. Commanders are to draft youth from the outlying boroughs. Frame it as 'civic duty,' if you have to."

"And if there's resistance?" the shadowed man asked. Her smile was cold. "Make examples." He nodded once, slow and deliberate. "What of reinforcements?"

"They'll arrive from Silvershoal before the Summer Solstice," she replied. "Two full companies. And with them; supplies, fresh coin, and a new tactician."

"A tactician?"

"Ruwan doesn't want another failure." The silence that followed was deep and full of understanding. The shadow moved; just enough to suggest a smile. Or perhaps a threat.

"I'll begin tonight," he said, voice like coal breaking under pressure. "The drills. The conscriptions. The True Eryshae will rise."

"Good." Mira turned, already vanishing into the doorway again, pausing only once. "And keep your face hidden. If Vael sees you, the game ends before it begins." He said nothing.

The door to the eastern library groaned open at her touch. Mira stepped in without being announced. No one would dare stop her. The guards stationed at the archway had looked the other way the moment they heard her boots.

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Inside, the firelight was low and the scent of old vellum and ink bled through the air like a ghost's perfume. High shelves lined the stone walls, packed with tomes in half-forgotten dialects. Every candle was shaded to burn low. Ruwan preferred it that way; dim enough to see the arcane glosses on illuminated script.

He stood before the massive central table, leaning over a lattice of maps and texts with a kind of focused, religious fervor. His coat was off. Sleeves rolled. One hand traced the spidery etchings of leyline fractures across a yellowed map of Eryshae's southern spine; the other hovered over a worn leather-bound volume, its cover embossed with seven sigils. Mira cleared her throat softly. "You're awake early."

"I never slept," Ruwan murmured without looking up. "Sleep is for the dead." She crossed the room in silence, stopping beside a second table piled with annotated charts and glass-paned specimen boxes. A strange mineral lay within one; black-veined and faintly pulsing like a dying star.

Ruwan didn't respond at first. His attention lingered on the open pages; the Fall of Deus, where the Treant's Roar rose too high, reached too far, and shattered the lattice of unity. A being once bound to the law of balance… undone by Desire.

"This Amber," he said at last, more to himself than her, "was part of his throne. A fragment that survived the collapse. It remembers the weight of dominion. The hunger to shape the world."

He looked up slowly, his eyes faintly reflecting the emberlight glow of the relic. "And now, it whispers to me." Mira said nothing. She had learned not to interrupt him when he was like this; on the edge of awe and madness.

"You went to the riverbank?" he asked. "Yes," she confirmed. "They were alone. Intimate. She's in deep, Ruwan. You were right, they are each other's weakness they don't know they have." She didn't bother disguising the contempt in her voice. "They floated like children." He paused, flipping a page. "Good. That makes her predictable."

"I also delivered your orders to the contact in Emberhold. Drills will begin tonight. Youth conscription follows within the week. He asked about the Silvershoal reinforcements."

"They'll arrive," Ruwan said, finally lifting his eyes. There was something brittle in them tonight; an edge sharper than steel. His ring glimmered faintly, pulsing in sync with the black mineral on the table.

"And Sam?" he asked. Mira's voice curled. "Carefree. Open-chested. No sword. If he's planning something… it's not martial."

"Not yet," Ruwan muttered. He turned back to the book before him. Mira stepped closer, peering at the passage he'd been poring over. Her eyes scanned the stylized script, the barbed lettering and gold-dusted margin illustrations: a Treant with a crown of roots, mouth open in a scream that cracked the heavens.

The chapter heading read:

"The Seven That Fell: A History of the First War with the Eldritch."

She read aloud:

"In the beginning, there was only Law.

Not kindness. Not cruelty. Not warmth, nor void; only the cold symmetry of balance..."

Ruwan's voice joined hers in a low whisper, finishing the passage from memory:

"Then came the Crack.

From that impossibility came Desire.

And with Desire, choice.

From choice came the First Sin."

He tapped the page, eyes glowing faintly now with the fire of obsession. "They don't teach this in Emberhold anymore. The Eryshae have forgotten their own bones. But I remember."

He flipped the page, revealing a full illustration of Pride; the Treant's Roar; falling from a throne made of bark and moonlight, cast from the Seat of Unity into what was only labeled Limbo. The sky cracked around him. Roots bled. The words below read:

Pride, the Treant's Roar, who declared himself above all and fell first.

His voice shook stars. His fall bent mountains. His echo still haunts the old woods.

He lifted the Amber again, cradling it like a holy thing. "Vael thinks she leads a new generation. But she walks inside a theater I built from ash and memory. She's not the future of Eryshae…"

He smiled faintly. "I am."

Ruwan turned from the window slowly, the Amber of Deus still cradled in one hand like a relic plucked from a ruin too sacred to name.

His gaze fell back to Mira.

"The bandits failed. I expected as much," he said, voice clipped but calm. "They're amateurs. Loud. Crude. Predictable. But now Sam and Vael will be wary; watching the shadows. Fortifying their dreams."

He stepped around the table, each movement a study in quiet menace. "That's why you must become something else, Mira. Not the blade in the dark, but the breath beside them." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You want me to approach?"

"I want you to embed," Ruwan replied. "Be seen. Be helpful. Get close. Let them invite you in. There's always an opening; they're building something, which means they'll need people. Friends. Allies. Volunteers." He studied her for a moment, weighing the sharp precision behind her stillness.

"You're not a ghost anymore," he murmured. "You're warmth. You're curiosity. You're whatever she needs to let her guard down. Learn their rhythms. Who they speak with. Where they'll go next. When she sleeps. How she breathes."

Mira said nothing, but the gears behind her soot-dark eyes began to turn. "If they change plans?" she asked. "Inform me at once," he said. "You'll have discreet means. No contact unless absolutely necessary."

He reached for a small polished box and opened it, revealing a carved sliver of amber; twisted into the same thorned spiral etched on the Titan's Amber of Deus. "Wear this around your neck," he said, handing it to her. "The amber will be useful."

Mira took it reverently, the amber warm against her palm. "And when the time comes?" she asked. "What do you want me to do?" Ruwan's voice was barely a whisper, but it slid like a knife through silk: "You'll help me pull the roots from under them while they still believe they're growing."

He turned away, already lost again in the quiet madness of his maps and myths. Mira bowed once more, slid the pendant over her head, and vanished back into the shadows. The game had changed. And this time, she would be the card they never saw coming.

The pendant around Mira's neck pulsed faintly as she stepped out into the night. She walked the long, winding road alone, the shadows clinging to her like old regrets. Emberhold's lanterns flickered in the distance, warm and golden. The city slumbered. But inside her, something did not.

She paused just outside the quarter where Sam and Vael were housed. Her breath caught. Not out of fear. But from memory. Laughter. Fingers through wet hair. The way Vael had looked at him; like he held every answer she never dared ask aloud.

Mira clenched her fists. They're marks, she reminded herself. Targets. Nothing more.

But the truth itched beneath her ribs like a splinter. She hadn't drawn her dagger at the riverbank. Not because she lacked the chance. But because… she hadn't wanted to.

That softness. That fire. It made her ache. Not with envy.

But with something more dangerous.

Curiosity.

Her fingers grazed the pendant, feeling the amber's warmth hum beneath her skin. She could still pull this off. Still do what was needed. But she'd have to be careful.

Because somewhere in the tangle of lies she wove for them…

She was starting to believe a few of her own.